1) Please introduce yourself in a few sentences
As-Salaam-Alaikum my name is Dr. Umar Dar and I am the CEO and founder of Tuesday in Love Halal nail polish and cosmetics I’m a medical doctor a scientist and an inventor of the world’s first and only truly water-permeable nail polish.
2) What does halal cosmetics mean?
For Muslims, the term Halal actually means permissible so in the context of food for example it specifically refers to anything that doesn’t contain things like alcohol or pork or pork byproducts or from any animal that’s not slaughtered according to the Islamic laws and traditions. However, when we’re talking about Cosmetics implications might not just be only in the ingredients it goes a little bit further than that we’re talking specifically in the way Cosmetics are manufactured and as well as we want to make sure that how we source the ingredients for our Cosmetics is within a Halal way and Halal standard. The first example that we can give you is, for example with animal cruelty now there are still a lot of cosmetic companies in the world that use animal testing and however in Canada here animal testing obviously is banned we don’t use any kind of animal testing in the manufacturing of any of our products another interesting thing to note when it comes to the Cosmetics industry is that a lot of cosmetic companies are still using child labor in the development of their products and when we talk about child labor we mean that
like they’re using children to go and mine for some of the ingredients that they find in large Minds it’s very dangerous conditions and also child labor is used in the manufacturing of the final product so children are forced to work in large factories and produce these cosmetics by these brands so as part of our Halal label again our Cosmetics are free of animal testing they’re cruelty free and they’re also child labor free.
3) When and why did you decide to create Tuesday In Love Halal nail polish and cosmetics?
Well back when I was a medical student again I was a poor medical student studying for my board exams and my wife and I were really struggling to get by and the Tuesday In Love story is really Our Kind of Love Story we had once were walking around in the mall and uh we sort of passed by like a small cosmetic stand and my wife was sort of just looking around at this at the stuff and she picked up a small bottle of nail polish and she looked at you know the price and then decided to just put it down and I was like you know what’s wrong and she’s like oh it’s okay you know what we can’t afford it right now um and kind of at that time that’s when it really hit me and I was like wow you know like I’m the most educated person in my family and I’m the poorest and so any way that night I was studying you know late at night and for some reason I just decided to look up nail polish and I came across something called Halal nail polish. And this was back when they were making those breathable types of nail polishes this one company was you know and after a bit of like reading and research I kind of looked at it and I’m like you know what I don’t think this actually works I’m like this doesn’t make sense because I have the chemistry background and I’m like there’s no way that this would work and I thought to myself you know what I’m like there should be something that works you know and I thought all right well let me see what I can come up with and so for the next few weeks what I did was I started um contacting chemical companies and asking them for samples and late at night in my kitchen I would sort of do little experiments and I turned my kitchen into like this makeshift lab and then finally one day I actually did come up with the formula that actually worked and the way I tested it was with the water permeability test that maybe you’ve seen where we do it on a paper towel and I thought oh this is kind of cool so I ended up buying like a little empty bottle of nail polish off of eBay and then I put the first color in there which was this really cute pink color and I wrapped it up.
And then the next morning I remember giving it to my wife and I showed her you know how it worked and I remember the way her eyes lit up um I remember the way she smiled and I remember that it was Tuesday and from that’s how we came up with the name Tuesday In Love and it’s actually her idea that we had turned this into a business so that’s really the Tuesday In Love Story.
4) What does it mean when nail polish it’s Halal or would do friendly?
So when it comes to Halal nail polish it’s important to remember that there’s a difference between companies that label their product as Halal versus companies that label it as water permeable or Wudu friendly.
Now unfortunately there are some breathable brands of nail polish that use the term Halal simply because the ingredients in their nail polish are Halal which is kind of silly because nail polish never really had animal ingredients in their nail polish to begin with however breathable does not mean water permeable in other words, water cannot actually go through a breathable nail polish and this is something that you know we’ve demonstrated a lot in our YouTube videos you know on TikTok and on Instagram where we sort of show how our nail polish you know allows water to go through it versus the competitor brands and it’s kind of unfortunate because you know we explain sort of like how these companies are using these marketing tactics to get people to buy their nail polish thinking that it will allow water to get through to the nail bed so part of our campaigns is that we really want to educate our customers in knowing that just because something says Halal doesn’t necessarily mean that it functions that way.
So Tuesday in loves water permeable formula however does in fact of course allow water to go through the nails you know for the purposes of what we do and from my understanding right now our patented formula is really the only one in the world that actually works.
5) What other benefits does halal-friendly nail polish have?
Well other than the purposes of making wudu absolutely nothing okay there’s this idea that breathable or water-permeable nail polish is somehow better for your nails it’s not and the reason is because your nails do not need to breathe the outermost part of your nail is made up of a protein called keratin and this hardens as that protein sort of like gets to the top like as your nails start to grow and the surface is made up of these dead cells and it’s the same type of cells that that your hair is made up of your nails or the outermost layer of your nails don’t have a blood supply and they don’t have a nerve Supply and this is the reason you don’t feel any pain when you clip your nails.
Um so, therefore, when a breathable nail polish brand like tries to tell you that their nail polish you know keeps your nails healthy they’re lying it there’s absolutely no medical evidence of this and there’s no scientific evidence of this either so unfortunately again they’re using these sort of marketing tactics to try to take your money the only time you want to have Halal or water permeable nail polishes when you need to make wudu so that you know that the water is getting down to your nail and washing over it completely.
6) What are the harmful effects of non-halal makeup?
Well, the most important thing to look at in a safer sort of makeup brand is whether or not it’s hypoallergenic and paraben free now all Cosmetics you know regardless of whether they’re Halal or not they contain specific industry standard chemicals um and additives such as preservatives and of course colors and dyes and therefore they’re still safe to use.
The only question you should really consider when purchasing makeup is how it reacts to your skin type so if you have sensitive skin you may want to consider like mineral-based makeup you may also want to consider you know how long you wear your makeup for how often you know you wash it off and even things like when it comes to your foundation whether you want to use a light coverage Foundation a medium coverage or you know heavier full coverage Foundation the other thing you should also consider is um how you have sort of like your makeup cleanup routine making sure that when you do take your makeup off that you’re using proper Um soaps and you’re using proper cleaning uh chemicals in order to take them off your skin thoroughly and completely.
And finally, no matter what type of makeup you use you should always invest in a good skincare routine and this is something that will help exfoliate your skin something to hydrate your skin as well as to help repair any damage to your skin um and of course Tuesday in love also makes Halal organic skin care um and our products are perfume free they’re dye-free. They are organic of course they’re also paraben free and hypoallergenic as well.
7) There are many nail polish companies that claim to be Halal certified how can someone make sure their nail polish is halal compliant?
One of the biggest kinds of scams that’s going on right now in the Halal Cosmetics Market is that companies are getting a law certifications for their nail polish without really proving that the product works and many companies what they’re simply doing is that they’re sending a list of their ingredients to a Halal certification agency and they saying that look our Halal nail polish is you know has Halal ingredients so give us a Halal certificate and they end up doing that.
Another company that sells breathable nail polish sent their nail polish to a lab professional lab and to have it tested for breathability and then they asked the Halal certifying agency to certify it so what I actually did was I contacted the lab and I asked them you know like how whether or not the formula actually passed a permeability test and how did you know they tested it and they actually messaged me back and saying that the permeability test really didn’t work and they’re saying that the formula itself doesn’t actually allow water to go through.
So now the next question then logically is well wait a minute if the actual lab that’s testing these Brands is saying that they don’t work then how are these Halal certifying agencies giving out Halal certificates so you kind of have to be careful when it comes to this it’s really important that we as consumers contact these Halal certifying agencies and you can ask them like a very simple questions um for example the breathable brains of nail polish will tell you that when you make wudu you have to rub your nails for you know x amount of seconds like 10 seconds or 20 seconds and so forth um so a very simple question you can ask the Halal certifying agency is like well okay they’re claiming that you have to rub your nails how much pressure do you need to apply when you rub your nails and question number two how do you even measure the amount of pressure that you need to apply when you’re making wudu scientifically speaking that’s never tested in any of these experiments because it’s not possible and again this is again marketing tactics that breathable nail polish brands are using to try to get you to know their Halal certificates and try to get people to believe that somehow you know the water is going to go through while they make will do.
The Tuesday In Love formula of course you know doesn’t require any rubbing or added pressure and this is one of the reasons why we’ve patented our formula you know water will go through simply when you just put your hands underneath the tap there’s enough pressure from the tap water that the water will go through instantaneously um some people have asked like when we do our Alka-Seltzer permeability tests or whether you’re doing the permeability test on a paper towel that it takes you know several seconds for the water to go through do I have to soak my nails and the answer is no under the pressure of running tap water which is between about
instant.
8) What is the difference between how normal nail polish and Halal friendly nail polish is made?
The only difference between regular nail polish and our Halal nail polish is that we add our special patented TIL permeability complex chemical to it and what this does is that it alters the Nitrocellular base of the nail polish which then allows it to sort of make this Matrix that allows water to go through it.
The other interesting thing about our formula is that it contains what’s called a water permeability some people may have wondered well they’re like well the nail polish when it sticks to the nail what about all the parts that it sticks to how does the water get to the part where it’s you know yeah stuck to the nail and the answer to that is again it comes down to adhesives there are things called waterproof adhesives like super glue which will never allow water to go through it and then there’s water permeable adhesives.
An example of a water-permeable adhesive is like Elmer’s glue or Arts and Crafts glue now obviously we don’t use you know Arts and Crafts glue in our nail polish but our adhesives are indeed water-permeable and that’s why anytime you do the water permeability test you’ll see that the water covers the entire nail now when it comes to breathable nail polish breathable nail polish is made with something that’s called K polymer and K polymer is a chemical that is used in contact lenses now this formula has never actually been proven to work.
You know K polymer it binds K polymer doesn’t bind to nitrocellulose which is the nail polish base the same way that it binds to silicone which is what you find in contact lenses you know and it’s like me saying that hey if you drink jet fuel you’ll be able to fly it sounds absolutely ridiculous because jet fuel doesn’t get metabolized in your body the way an airplane metabolizes it and the same way K polymer doesn’t work in nail polish the way it works in contact lenses so for the record please don’t drink jet fuel you’re more likely to end up on in the hospital.
9) What do you think the future of the Halal cosmetic industry is?
The Halal Cosmetics industry is definitely booming and that’s wonderful because there’s going to be a lot more new innovative products and a lot more companies that are going to create products specifically for most Muslim women and the needs of Muslim women that you know come on a day-to-day basis.
One example for that sort of I can give you from our own Tuesday In Love line is that we have a special hair oil for example that is designed for women who wear hijab. It’s a special B12 and vitamin D mix because women who cover their hair for long periods of time obviously don’t get enough sunlight to the scalp and to the hair as well as a lot of those nutrients can get stripped from the hair itself there can be a lot of oil buildup on the scalp so the hair oil is designed specifically for Muslim women to sell help them keep their hair healthy and you know and looking good even when they take off their hijab.
10) Why do you think such products are important for Muslims?
Well Muslims actually make up a very big part of the consumer base all around the
world not just in North America and Europe but we’re talking like globally and therefore finding products that meet religious needs are as well as sort of like the new trends in beauty is very important to people and this type of opportunity is also important for entrepreneurs and small businesses because it actually gives us the ability to help create and define this very specific Market.
11) How do you think mainstream makeup brands can cater to Muslims better?
Beware of mainstream makeup brands many people have this idea that big Brands like you know that are department store brands are doing the Muslim Community a favor by representing us in their ad campaigns you know it might be nice to see you know a picture of a woman wearing hijab in your local makeup store and so forth.
Big mainstream brands are not there to represent you I believe rather than relying on mainstream Brands to provide us the Muslims the products that we need we should be supporting small businesses and we should be supporting small Muslim businesses and independent businesses in our communities I want us as a community to become the mainstream you know we should strive to create such great businesses that people want to come to us and they want to be more like us and they want to use our products uh rather the other rather than the other way around.
I believe that as Muslims you know our businesses will be built on honesty they’ll be built on transparency they’ll be built on ethics and of course on charity so I believe that that’s really where the Tuesday In Love brand stands I believe that’s the power of love.